Last Friday Jamie and Roy from SSHC went with a housing surveyor from NWHS called Lee Anderson to take a look at three houses the Co-op is looking at buying.  We'll be discussing these houses and our other options at Tonight's SSHC Meeting. 

On Thursday night SSHC attended the launch of the NUS ground breaking report on the state of student housing Homes Fit for Study.

The report really just confirms what we already know but stand-out statistics are:

- 47% of students have lived in houses with mould or condensation

- Only 50% felt their accommodation was value for money

- 52% of students regularly feel uncomfortably cold in their home due to poor insulation or draughts

We're starting to work with the NUS on spreading the co-op word to other universities and lobbying government.

www.nus.org.uk/HomesFitforStudy

The Meeting started with a general update on what the co-op has been doing since our last meeting:

·         Jamie and Roy met with the phone co-operative and North West Housing Services and had a very positive meeting discussing a private investor financially supporting SSHC. The current plan is that this investor will purchase 2 properties for 10 residents totalling around £400,000. SSHC will pay some of its income to the investor but will also be able to build up capital. This opportunity allows SSHC to show that it is financially feasible and successful. The plan is that in 3/5/7 years SSHC would be able to approach banks and private investors in order to purchase houses. The investor have made it clear they would give us control over the house, short of knocking things down, which means we can still develop these properties as places to live. Also, we would be able to buy the properties from the investor in the future. This isn’t what we originally set out to do, but is simply the most effective way of setting the co-op and proving to mortgage lenders that we can manage our own properties.

·         Jamie and Roy have also talked to Tom Hunt from the labour party about the co-op. We filled him in on the project so that he could feedback to Paul Blomfield, Labour MP for Sheffield Central. No real actions from this meeting, but it was good to meet up and further spread the idea. Tom himself was very supportive of the idea and keen to help us get in contact with other organisations who could help us out in the future. We also talked about spreading the story of the co-op around Sheffield, through various magazines and email lists. The idea was that it would be good to raise the public profile of SSHC so that when we start looking for investors in a couple of years time, people will recognise SSHC.

Actions:

Jamie is going to contact North West Housing to try and organise a surveyor to come and look at three properties next week. SSHC supporters will be told of when these house viewings are happening so you can come and look at the house with us, particularly if you are supporters that actually want to live in the house.

Anna-Ruth has started working on the Alumni funding application. Nice one.

In the next general newsletter that Roy sends out, he will ask people to reply if they are wanting to live in one of the SSHC properties. This is to get a good idea of how we will fill up the 10 places. In the meeting we discussed first going through our email list and the facebook page, then we could send out a Uni wide email. The idea is that we want to give priority to people who have been coming to the meetings and who have taken an interest.

Roy and Rosie will look at the funding application from the co-operative group.

Roy will think about the A3 poster and will contact people when he wants specific jobs done.

Next meeting, 31/3/14 Bath Hotel, 6pm.